media

Blue August

Elections are next week here in Missouri.

Expected turnout is predicted to be 24%, meaning that things like Proposition C, a last ditch effort by anti-Obama Missouri Republicans and Tea Partyers to kill the new health care system, will likely fail. Voting “yes” on Prop C is a lot like setting yourself up to apply for a Darwin Award. You may not have a condition that requires that your insurance company to pay for lifesaving treatment today, but if by chance your insurance provider feels the need to drop you like a bad habit because your cancer is a “pre-existing condition” (*ahem*Wellpoint/Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield*ahem*), then basically you have chosen to cull yourself from the heard. So, the smart thing to do would be to vote NO on Prop C!

I don’t like either Republican candidate for Missouri State Auditor. Tom Schweich donated $250 to Ed Martin last year! Being endorsed by John Ashcroft is also a good enough reason to abhor him. Meanwhile, Allan Icet isn’t any better. Icet put Joe the Plumber in his ads and tried to draw attention to the letter “T” in his name to highly his support for the Tea Party, Schweich became the lesser of two evils.Forget it! They both have Tea Party backers, and both equally thourghly suck. Until I remembered that Susan Montee, the incumbent, was running to keep her place as State Auditor. Hopefully, Montee will have a Hail Mary strategy against her two boisterous rivals. I haven’t seen any of her ads lately.

In the St. Louis area, expect Robyn Hamlin and Ed Martin (both Tea Party Republicans) to lose to William Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan, respectively. Despite Clay’s recent support for the Riverview Casino Project (which should really be in Cape Girardeau, not near the serene wetlands of the Mississippi-Missouri River Confluence), Clay will likely keep his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for District 1. Carnahan (like his sister Robin) will likely also succeed for District 2. Ed Martin is clearly in La-la-land, accusing President Obama of “removing religious freedoms”. Just about every religious group and civil liberties group has told Martin his Tin Foil Hat is on too tight.

The big campaign for the state of Missouri is for U.S. Senate. With Kit Bond retiring (hooray!), Roy Blunt and Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan are vying for the senate seat. Blunt, who like his son (former governor Matt Blunt, or as he’s known here as “Missouri’s Dubya”), is knee deep in corruption and lobbyists. Blunt’s second and current wife Abigail Perlman is a lobbyist for Kraft Foods. They married in 2003. Blunt has his own Political Action Group, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund (ROYB Fund), spending more than $2 Million of which his contributors include Altria (L for Love, Mrs. Perlman), Enron (clearly before it imploded), Microsoft, and Jack Abramoff who is currently living in a halfway house after spending 70 months in Federal P.M.I.T.A. Prison.

In terms of general contributions, Monsanto, Peabody Energy, Goldman Sachs, Blue Cross/Blue Shield (pro-prop C), Devon Energy (Most money given out to ANYONE this year from their company: $10,000), Cheveron (In the top 5 recipients this year alone), Valero Energy (One of four senators who received at least $10,000 this year the most given out to anyone), Exxon Mobile (2nd most money donated THIS YEAR, #1 for the state of Missouri), BRITISH PETROLEUM!. 2nd most money received since records were compiled online ($12,500) and Kit Bond eclipses Blunt who out ranks John Ashcroft, Dick Gephardt, and Jim Talent).

If there is anyone who has his hand so covered in black muck this election it is Roy Blunt!

As for comparisons, checking Robin Carnahan, William Lacy Clay, Russ Carnahan, Susan Montee, and Claire McCaskill have nearly spotless records with most of their money coming in from labor unions. There are a couple of small smudges such as receiving donations from Ameren but their donations are pocket change compared to the Big Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas companies that have made Congressman Blunt and family very wealthy.

However, my biggest criticism of Democratic candidates is that they haven’t adverized themselves. I have yet to see Robin Carnahan, Russ Carnahan, Susan Montee, William Lacy Clay, or Anti-Prop C supporters invest in a massive media campaign like the fearmongers on the right have. Is it because we have a democratic president? Is it because we have democratic (in name only sadly) governor? Are they being over confident or underfunded? Or have the Dems driven people nuts with asking people for money? Find me a Democratic website where you don’t run into a splash page asking for a donation of $20 or more! I’d be interested in supporting say $5, but $20 is just too much for right now. Not unless I get a good looking T-shirt out of it.

Everyone is still broke. And the Republican candidates don’t seem to get that. They want things to be as they were on January 19, 2009 and they are willing to invest plenty of money to spread lies to no end, forgetting that the Internet is their Achilles heel. The republican still don’t get it, yet they are willing to burn down everything to prove their point and gain support.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, July 30th, 2010 Internet, Missouri, Saint Louis City, Saint Louis County, economy, energy, environment, healthcare, media, politics No Comments

Airport Security Experiencing Complete Turbulance!

No doubt that just about everyone in the world has heard about The Grinch who tried to blow himself up on an airplaine as it was landing in Detroit on Christmas.

Well, since then world wide airport security has taken steps…backward.

Whether it be passenger incompetence about things you can’t bring on board (NO EXCEPTIONS!), turning the plane around for one passenger whose name is similar to another person on the No-Fly List and doubling travel time and expenses, freaking out because some guy left LaGuardia Airport wasn’t on any of the aircraft but was on the No-Fly List so the airport had to be shut dhow for six hours, cancelling everyone’s flight over a jar of honey, or illegally seizing someone’s computer for being critical about current and new, rediculous security measures. If this is what you call an effective system, even if nothing is found (because it still costs way too much money to conduct any search), the system is in panic. And what happens when a person has anxiety attack, they become paranoid.

Even with terrorist threats picking up again, the TSA’s level of effectiveness is SLIPPING!

Terrorists are smart. We assume that these guys are people who live in caves and shout things in Arabic wearing scarves and toating AK-47s and C4 vests to blow themselves up. But this is wrong. To quote Keanu Reeves from the movie Speed, terrorists are “crazy, not stupid.”

The guy who stuck up the flight in Detroit this Christmas was the son of a wealthy Nigerian lawyer. Osama bin Ladin and much of his family and next of kin are wealth. Bin Ladin is the heir of a wealthy construction company. We thought that locking up his bank account would stop a guy who has enough money that he can pay for everything with cash.

Then their are all the other terrorists we have forgotten about. People who were part of the Irish Republican Army, Hezbollah, November 14th, E.T.A., Animal Liberation Front, and of course the domestic terrorists in our own country, some who may have been at the Town Hall Outbursts last year mearly to observe rather than engage in the madness.

We’ve spent the past eight years chasing ghosts, and locking up the wrong people, while suicide bombings and IEDs still go off on a daily basis, but the news media shugs it off like it is mearly a bug hitting a windshield.

Yet, you can’t enter or leave London anymore whout getting a full body high-power X-ray which is unsafe and illegal. You don’t go to the Airport anymore to travel, you go there to be herded, profiled, and treated like cattle only to have the airport shut down, flights cancelled, and planes turning around after nearly reaching their destination because of one passenger whose name matches some retired terrorists in Ireland.

People forget that terrorists are smart. They don’t need to fly commercially if they have their own private jet. They don’t even need to be at the airport to enter this country. They can hop a cargo ship, a train, or just WALK IN to the country from some port of entry no one thinks about. And what about the Domestic terrorists? Clearly, they have the ablity to drive to their destination, catch a train, or simply WALK where they want.

We are looking in the wrong direction. We have all this high technology to check someone at the airport, yet the terrorist don’t even need to use the Internet. They can be low tech and on the downlow. Look at Ted Kazenski, the Unibomber. The FBI was on a nation wide manhunt for him, yet their he was living in his little cabin in the woods, self susstaining, and off the grid.

This is why after nearly a decade, we still haven’t apprehended Osama Bin Ladin. Why shoes are taken off at the airport and strip searches are kicking in. Why an X-ray machines are being installed in airports.

Frequent exposure to X-rays in a place that really isn’t a hospital is VERY dangerous! Why in the world would when you go to the dentist, you have to wear a lead apron? So that your entire body isn’t exposed to X-Ray radiation. If you are a frequent flyer, you are about to have cancer, because the Airport is not the Hospital or the Dentist.

We worry that terrorists will set off a radiologically device, when the airport has several of them going off all the time, exposing everyone to radiation hazards daily. The guy at the TSA at the security gate is not the X-Ray Technician at the hospital.

We’ve lost at this point. The TSA is beating a dead horse hoping that it will live and still work and is lashing out at everyone who doesn’t believe that they have the ability to resurenct that horse to back to life and become Optimus Prime of the Transformers.

We need a new plan. We know what to look for. Adding security measure after security measure has been ineffective, expensive, a health hazard, and a hassle.

We assume that the enemy is stupid. So we treat everyone with indignation hoping that the terrorist will jump out and say “hey I’m over here!” We’ve been going at this all wrong!

We think that we won’t be treated terribly at the airport, but when you get there, “Surprise!”

If we want to catch people on the No-Fly List before they even enter the airport, why not put security guards at the front door of the airport rather than scattered throughout the terminals? This has been very effective at sports stadiums. They don’t inspect you when you are on the floor where your seats are at the stadium. They do it at the entrance. You can’t even get into the base ball stadium to buy anything unless you pass security. Why is this not the case at the airport?

Why are we find out about terrorists getting on plains seconds after the plane doors are closed, when people’s names are printed on the tickets? Why aren’t we identifying people who buy thier tickets when they are being printed off? We can tell somone their credit card has been declined instantly, but we can’t tell some “sorry sir, you can’t fly on the plane, you are on the No-Fly List.” To which just like the credit card declination, you can go to someone and dispute that information to possibly clear your self, especially if it involves Identity fraud.

What are the chances that a terrorist with your name, has a credit card similar to your own? We are able to identify an identity theif all the time with the credit card, but why not with airline tickets?

And what about the guys who pay with cash? I mean, you need proof of identity to buy the ticket in the first place. If you are flying internationally, you need your passport. SO WHY ISN’T THE TSA LOOKING UP THIS INFORMATION BEFORE PEOPLE GET ON THE PLANE?!

It only makes the terrorists look so much smarter, and the TSA look so much more stupid. Sure the TSA can take the credit when they find someone, but when they fail, they want to blame something else.

Don’t we have a unified system to identify international terrorists? Clearly there isn’t or else that one guy would have been stopped in Amsterdam where he was chaning his underwear to Fruit of a Booms!

No improvements have been made at the airport. If there were, people wouldn’t be critical of the TSA, London wouldn’t be turing into an Orwellian nightmare, and terrorists wouldn’t even be able to get into the airport.

Preparations is more than just guarding the airport, but making sure that terrorists can’t even buy tickets to get on the plane in the first place!

Use your heads, for crying out loud, TSA!

Tags: , , ,

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 Safety, censorship, crime, media, security, tourism No Comments

Climate Change is still very, very real

Despite the leaked information this week by a few scientist stiffling dissent and doctoring data, the information that is now public does NOT prove that skeptics were right.

However, when the mainstream media, with corporate sponsors and ownership by large energy conglomorates or stock in the obsolete technology that is continuing to be used and wreck havoc not just on climate but on agriculture, property, maritime safety and physical well being.

Skeptics assume that because this data is now public, they now have proof that climate change caused by humans is a myth, but they are very, very wrong!

Even though there is scandel brewing over climate change brough on by the University of East Anglia, the fact that the leading scientists tried to slience decent and exagerate the truth, there are many other institutions in the world with their own independent research and data to prove that climate change is still very real and does not only threaten the environment but economic interests.

Many climate change skeptics deny the existance of climate change not because of ignorance but because they fear that if action is taken to curb climate change it will mean that government regulation will be imposed to reduce the amount of manufacturing thus driving down profits.

The fact that economic liberalism (often supported by conservative political parties) has already allowed free trade to move manufacturing to countries with lax environmental regulation or to punch exceptions into laws than make existing pollutors to be exempt from new environmental laws has not only contributed to environmental damage but agricultural disaster, economic recession, unemployment, and poverty.

The status quo believes that it is unsulated from these problems because they have the wealth to afford to establish themselves where it will effect them the least. The problem is that despite isolating themselves from the outside world, the outside will always find a way in.

So if skeptics believe that because they have released the quibble of a few scientists trying to cover up dissent that talks in Copenhagen will fail, the skeptics are wrong!

It should be noted that eariler this year, News International was caught hiring hackers to break into private telephone and compuyter systems to dig up private conversations and personal information then used the stollen data to sensationalize it senationalize news in tabloids owned by News International.

News International is the corporation in the United Kingdom controlled by Rupert Murdoch who also owns News Corp (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, MySpace.com) in the United states as well as News Limited in Australia.

Murdoch’s senationalism and biased news coverage has invoked all sorts of anarchy for all the wrong reasons.

In the United State, Murdoch’s “Fixxed News” has destablized the Republican Party by forcing out moderate, center-right conservative supporters in order to cater to the Republican base and far-right. Because Republicans emphazies the values of ONLY their base while abandoning and expelling everybody else, the Republican party has lost control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the 2008 Presidential Election not to metion many state and general elections through out the country.

As if that weren’t enough, the base and the far-right then developed misguided protest in the form of the what is now the T.E.A. Party Movement which has polarized American politics. One of the many things people notice about the T.E.A. Party is that it is composed mostly by white upper class individuals who for nearly the past 25 years (complements of former president Ronald Regan) have gotten away with alot of deregulation that created a barrier between the upper class and the middle class and has constantly pushed the middle class into becoming part of the working poor or into poverty.

With the rise of the Internet, a growing resistance has developed. So much so that in 2008, America elected President Obama through a grass roots campaign and community organization efford.

While the base and the far-right claims it has developed their own “grass roots efforts”, the discovery of who is really part of their grass roots campaigns denotes that they are not grass roots and only used the name “grass roots” as a buzzword which also has liberal activists on the look out for other things like greenwashing, disinformation, and of course counterhacktivism.

The counterhacktivism this week is a sign that conservative base and far-right are desperate to keep the status quo, even as going as far as to make it appear that the real hactivists are throwing their support behind skepticism. Of course, the mainstream media doesn’t know the difference between counterhacktivism and hacktivism. So who takes the credit for revealing this e-mails at East Anglia? The hacktivists.

Don’t be surprise to see more attacks by counterhactivists on issues such as the National Healthcare, Network Neutrality, Alternative Energy, Unionization, and fighting against Telecom Immunity and Factory Farming.

It is up to the hacktivist to fight back against the corporate and neo-conservative counterhacktivists.

This is our world. We have to defend it!

Tags: , , , ,

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 Activism, agriculture, censorship, economy, employment, energy, environment, green, greenwashing, hackers, media, news, politics No Comments

Rupert Murdoch should get a free ride home from the airport complements of the FBI

Telephone hacking, or phreaking, is a common subject in hacker magazines like 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. Because most forms are illegal, they are discussed in hypothetical situations.

Unfortunately, there is nothing hypothetical about paying over $1 million in hush money to quiet victims of telephone hacking. Especially when you are a controvertial billionaire broadcasting magnate who own various media outlets around the world.

Rupert Murdoch, the man who runs the New York Post, Fox News, and MySpace, is in hot water in the UK for hiring hackers to break in to cellular telephones (which are now like mini-computers) to steal personal information. (Hireing hackers is not as rare as you think. The FBI has a page about such people who hire hackers to break the law for them.) Murdoch’s UK company News Group then tried to use hush money to cover up the hackings of THOUSANDS of cellphones.

This is a controversy that not only concerns the UK, but also the United States, where his US company News Corp may have persuaded a judge into making MySpace the victium in the US v. Drew case, where locally, a depressed teenager was bullied into killing herself due to the actions of Lori Drew of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri.

More over, how does the paparazzi manage to get into the cellphonese of celebrities? Why was Barack Obama’s cellular records being looked over by workers at Verizon last year?

Murdoch’s involvement with telephone hacking in the UK will open up alot of questions that involve privacy when the Federal Bureau of Investigation meets up with him upon his return to the United States.

A major computer crime has been committed. Not by some guy with alot of time on his hands, but by a very rich and very powerful person who does not have authorized access to pry into the personal information of people around the world.

This man does not hold any leadership in government! There is no George W. Bush to pardon his actions or to make an excuse for him to break the law.

Gordon Brown is not at all pleased that the News Group is hacking telephones. So why should we permit him to break the law here with the News Corp?

I really urge anyone to contact their telephone provider and tell them that Mr. Murdoch does not have permission to break into their cellphone.

It is probably a good idea to shoot off a complaint to the FBI’s Interent Crime Center, especially if you susspect that your phone is being hacked.

It’s time to send Mr. Murdoch where he belongs: IN PRISON!

Tags: , , , ,

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 Activism, cellphones, crime, hackers, media, news, security, telecom No Comments

It’s the Pig Poop, Stupid!

All the hype about swine flu (or as it will be called here “pig flu”) has a simple cause: PIG SH*T.

While the pig flu has killed many people in Mexico, the real reason why it is a pandemic is because despite being a relatively poor nation (no offense to anyone I know who is from Mexico or Latin America) Mexico is a vacation hot spot for many international tourists. In fact, I’d like to go there some day.

The thing is the media has been giving Mexico a bad rap much like North St. Louis. As if illegal immigration and the drug war weren’t bad enough, now there is the pig flu. What’s next? Robots that eat old people’s medication for fuel?

Mexico is going through a bout of bad luck right now. And it doesn’t help that Global Trade egged on the problem.

So what does globalization have to do with the pig flu? More importantly, how did pig poop get involved?

In agriculture, farmers use animal excrement as fertilizer. This is a normal farming practice. Poop from animals such as cows and pigs is nearly 20 times as potent as human poop, which makes it an attractive fertilizer for farmers. The problem is when big corporate owned farms use too much fertilizer.

Large amounts of animal excrement are produced at Intensive pig farms that use Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). CAFOs are good if you are farming chickens or veal. For animals such as pigs or large cows, they are a disaster waiting to happen which has drawn the ire of many environmentalist, food safety advocates, and animal welfare organizations.

Some CAFOs have large anaerobic lagoons that give off large quantities of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, that gets into the air. Hydrogen sulfide can enter into the water cycle through evaporation, condensation, and return to earth as precipitation known as acid rain. Ammonia, by nature, is caustic and flamable. Hazardous to both humans and plants in large concentrations. These chemicals are given off as microrganisms that can enhance the fertilizer reproduce.

Just as dirt is subject to erosion on non-level surfaces, fertilizer (containting the microrganisms, including bacteria that can lead to viral infections) can wash down hill too. The excess poop washes into a small stream, lagoon, or river, contaminating the water supply downstream.

Prior to the pig flu epidemic, there were enviornmental protests against CAFOs with large anaerobic lagoons. One of these CAFOs, Granjas Carroll de México owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods. Granjas Carroll is located in Perote, Veracruz, east of Mexico City and West of the city of Veracruz. Near by residents of La Gloria (to the south) could not stand the smell anymore and they certainly were not going to put up with a large corporation contaminating their water suppy.

With easy access to a large population and a popular vacation destination, made it easy for the virus to transmit globally.

But keep things in perspecitive. Infection and death rates outside of Mexico have been very low. Even with thousands of cases in Mexico and a couple hundred of deaths, all the cases are in small clusters. Groups that went to Mexico on vacation or Spring Break. It doesn’t at all surprise me that the largest group of people outside of Mexico were a group of Catholic school kids. People who went to the missionaries or the beaches.

If you haven’t been to Mexico in the past month, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!

In fact, go out this weekend! Go celebrate at a Cinco de Mayo party. (Even if Cinco de Mayo is next week an not this week end.) Go to a Mexican restaurant. I plan to do that.

Reguardless of what happens, when this is over, there will be an investigation in to agribusiness and global trade. (As if rich people aren’t in trouble enough already. LOL!)

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE!

Tags: ,

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 agriculture, economy, environment, health, media, news, security No Comments

 

September 2010
M T W T F S S
« Jul    
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930